Harrisville | Change Is Hard

So what does a person do while camping at Harrisville State Park once the main mission has been accomplished?

Well. If we’d had another clear night I’d have been out there on the beach getting a second good look at the Milky Way. But we weren’t that fortunate.

*We went to the marina on Tuesday to look at the boats. There weren’t many there.*

Monday, as we were setting up camp under blue skies, a park employee told us that Tuesday would be rainy but Wednesday was going to be nice. We figured we’d get through Tuesday and find something fun to do on Wednesday.

*Tuesday looked like this most of the day.*

We figured wrong.

During the day Tuesday we kept expecting it to rain, but it was just breezy and cold. The rain held off, but we expected it at any time. It was really too cold to enjoy walking on the beach.

We went to the local library to stay warm as we tried to find something to do. I googled “What is there to do in Harrisville Michigan?” Google came back with 5 things.

1. Sturgeon point lighthouse. Been there, it wasn’t open but we got an amazing image.

2. Harrisville State Park. That’s where we were staying.

3. Cedarbrook Trout Farm. Well, I guess that was a possibility.

4. Bailey School. Saw it through the window, it wasn’t open.

5. Sturgeon Point State Park. Well, that’s where the lighthouse is…so…..

We spent a couple hours at the library, reading magazines and hanging out. When we headed back to camp to make dinner it began to rain.

*You can always count on a library to fill a couple of hours.*

So we each grabbed some snacks and our reading material and ducked into our tents.

*Peanut butter on crackers…perfect snack food.*

Fourteen hours later it finally stopped raining. Though I like listening to waves while I sleep I really didn’t need to listen to them for that many hours in a row.

And the kicker was that Wednesday wasn’t really any better than Tuesday had been. Windy and cold. We decided to go to the local diner for breakfast.

*A warm breakfast always helps to make the day brighter.*

There we asked the waitress what there was to do in Harrisville, and she mentioned a couple of stores. One was an art gallery that we had planned on visiting, another was a resale shop with supposedly cool stuff just waiting to be picked over.

We had hope.

*We skipped, reminiscent of the Wizard of Oz, down the city sidewalks. We were still cold.*

But it turns out neither place was open because we were up there before Memorial Day, the official start to summer. Sigh.

We walked around the nearly empty town and then drove back to the library where I skimmed a book and she read another magazine.

And then we decided to pack it in and go home.

*Time to go, even though it wasn’t technically time to go.*

We’d only made one meal at camp. We’d spent way more hours in our tents than we’d planned. It was cold and wet.

We’d accomplished my goal so we could call the trip a success, and sleeping in a real bed in a warm house looked pretty good. It only took us an hour to throw everything in the car and head home.

*Sometimes you have to admit that Mother Nature won.*

Of course halfway home we stopped at a roadside park and the sun came out. But that was OK, we felt good about our decision to bail on our last night at camp.

The sun came out on our way home. *Made us smile.*

After all, there’s always another adventure waiting in the wings. I could tell you what and where, but that would spoil the story.

*This little guy ate better than we did!*

And I wouldn’t want to do that.

Let’s see. When I left you last my sister and I had driven a few hours north, scoped out a potential night sky photography site at a lighthouse, and set up our campsite at Harrisville State Park.

The purpose of this three night camping adventure was to capture the Milky Way in darker skies than those around my house. I’d made the three night reservation six months ago in order to get a prime Lake Huron shoreline site.

I was sure that at least one night would have clear skies.

*A view of the lighthouse from about where we planed to stand later that night.*

Based on weather forecasts it looked like Monday night/Tuesday morning was my only chance. So we set our phone alarms to get us up at 2:00 a.m. and in the early morning darkness we drove the few miles to the lighthouse.

We quickly found the “X” we had drawn in the sand earlier in the day and began to set up shop. But while I was lengthening the tripod legs I noticed a light way out on the horizon, shining just above the bench I intended to use as a foreground. The light bothered me because it was so bright.

*See that light in the middle of the horizon? It was a lot brighter than it looks here. The orange is light pollution.*

I took a couple shots but didn’t like what I was seeing.

*Too much light from towns to the south.*

I decided to shorten the tripod legs in an attempt to hide the light behind the dune. I sent my sister over to the bench so I could try to focus on it, intending for it to be in the foreground which would be stitched together with another image with the focus being the stars.

*She’s walking back using the red light. You can still see some of that bright light on the horizon to the right of her.*

That didn’t work, I couldn’t focus on her at all, so I gave up that theory. Plus we were too far away from the bench and if I moved closer there would be that darn light out there on the horizon.

I decided to just try for a single image, nothing I had to stitch together later, just practicing getting the stars in focus. That worked and I took several of the same image so I’d have some spares to practice stacking when I got back home.

*You can see the bench, but it’s really small and there’s too much light pollution.*

But all the time I was focused on the Milky Way I’d been distracted by the lighthouse to my right. The grounds had a single large light on the other side of the building which was lighting up the side of the tower. I thought it was beautiful and wanted to get a shot of that even if it wasn’t a Milky Way image.

*I started to move the camera around while not realizing the shutter was still open.*

So once I was done with the multitude of stackable images of the Milky Way, and feeling disappointed in the images I had so far, I turned the camera toward the lighthouse. And the first test image I took I realized included a small part of the Milky Way!

How exciting, it was possible to get the Milky Way and the lighthouse in the same image! Quickly I shifted the camera to the right. And this is what I saw:

*Nikon Z6ii, 20 mm, iso 3200, 12 seconds.*

The yard light they had perfectly lit the tower without being obscene. I had enough time in between flashes of light to get the image because there was so much other light around. And by moving to the right I had eliminated most of the ugly orange light pollution that blasted out over the lake.

I was thrilled.

The rest of the night I worked on getting the best composition, and then taking multiple shots to stack later. I think I was also trying to get one image with the lighthouse in focus that I could use as a foreground to be blended with my best sky shot.

To be honest I don’t know if I did that. I haven’t looked closely at all the images yet. I fell in love with the single image I’m showing you now and sort of stopped looking after that.

It’s such a great reminder of the entire adventure.

If I don’t end up doing anything more with these I’ll still be happy. I need to read the study guides in my online class to learn how to do blends where part of the image is from one shot with the foreground in focus and the rest of the image is from a sky shot with the stars in focus. It can’t be that hard. Right?

Right???!

So what did we do the rest of our three nights at Harrisville? Well…this has gotten too long already so once again you’ll have to wait and see. But I don’t think anything we did the rest of our time there will top that first night.

*Hint: There were no more clear skies, day OR night!*

When I’m out shooting the stars I don’t feel the cold. My sister, who was patiently waiting for me was marching up and down the beach trying to thaw her toes. I didn’t notice the cold until we got back to the car, and then I realized I was cold to the core.

We got back to camp about 5 a.m. and headed to our tents to get one hour of sleep before the 6 a.m. sunrise which we wanted to photograph. But we were both so cold all we did was shiver in our tents, even with our electric blankets, as we waited for the sun to come up.

And after we got a couple shots with the sun rising we scurried to McDonalds to get a hot cup of coffee and a breakfast sandwich. It took a couple hours before we were ready to head back to our tents for a nap.

*It was pretty but we were too cold to appreciate it.*

Warm was good.

So Monday night/Tuesday morning was the highlight of our camping adventure. Would it be worth it to stick around Harrisville for the rest of our reservation? Hard to say. When I get some more time I’ll show you around town.

But it won’t be under the stars.

Change Is Hard

…but change is certain.

Tag Archives: Harrisville

The third (and last) Harrisville adventure debriefing

When a 3 night reservation turns into two…continued